until exhausted (close our eyelids)
by cyclothimic
Summary: tumblr prompt: basically everything before & during hospital visit up to the last breath but from Lena's perspective. Lena accepting her fate and letting Kara go would be heartbreaking. l or 'she glides away' all over again, except in Lena's POV [part 5 of the 'cold bones' series]


**hey, if you wanna yell at me, don't. direct your angst to that marvelous person who gave me this prompt.**

 **now, read, ponder, and bawl. :)**

* * *

 _I'm miles from where you are,_

 _I lay on the cold hard ground._

 _I pray that something picks me up,_

 _And sets me down in your warm arms._

 _-Set the Fire to the Third Bar, Snow Patrol_

* * *

 _First month_

There were better doctors at L-Corp. Efficient and effective equipment. Everything at L-Corp far outshined the service she obtained at National City General Hospital. Or better yet, just show up at the DEO headquarters and a certain Agent Danvers would put at the top of her priority list.

But there was one thing about the two better options that drove her to the general hospital, which was the fact that they _knew_ who she was. The people at the hospital may know her – who wouldn't – but they were also bound by something that those at DEO and L-Corp were not: doctor-patient confidentiality. If what she suspected turned out to be true, Alex or Jess would tell her wife first thing.

Deep down, Lena held out the thin thread of hope that she was just being paranoid and this worry that nibbled in the back of her mind was just wasteful.

Maybe she peed darker because of dehydration.

Maybe she itched places where they shouldn't itch because she was allergic to something and she didn't know it.

Maybe the stomachache was because she hadn't eaten enough.

Maybe the back pain was due to lack of activity.

Maybe she couldn't stomach chocolate anymore because her body was facing its own quarter life crisis.

Maybe if those symptoms hadn't shown up all at once, she wouldn't have to think about this at all.

.

"I'm taking the rest of the day," was what she told Jess before hanging up and turning off her phone.

She stood outside the hospital building, blatantly ignoring her driver who was waiting at the front. Her fingers clutched onto the purple folder tightly, mildly grateful that she wasn't strong enough to completely destroy it. But she knew someone who could. As a matter of fact, she was married to that someone. That was why she had politely asked the doctor to email her a copy of her medical report before leaving.

She didn't quite know where to go from now on. Somehow, all her visions and wishes had vanished all at once when those words left the doctor's lips and put a clarification stamp on her expiry date forever. At that, she laughed sardonically, quiet enough for it to only be for her ears.

She had often thought she'd die young, what with her brother and mother's long list of enemies. They always just came to her somehow, thinking that her life would make up for everything that her family had done. But those were that, thoughts and anticipations, never concrete, never certain. Until now, when she could actually see it on the calendar.

Each second that passed seemed so much shorter now. In the blink of an eye and all that.

She stuffed the folder into the inside pocket of her coat and nodded sternly to herself before she headed towards the car. Sickness or no, she didn't forget to offer Kurt a smile as he opened the door for her to get in. When Kurt returned to the driver seat, he waited for her next order.

She looked out the window, taking in the skyscrapers that blocked her view to the endless blues beyond it. The universe that extended far beyond them, far beyond her. For a moment, she wondered if heaven was real, and then the atheist in her came back to action and she shook her head.

"Home, please."

.

Nothing anyone could ever say would change her mind on the fact that Barney was the best dog there was – a realization that only surfaced when she came home and instead of bounding to her like he usually did, he just sat there by the threshold, eyes turned up and tail subdued. She hadn't even stepped foot into the place and he could already sense that something was wrong.

Lena kept eye contact with him for a prolonged period of time, randomly wondering if Kara would be able to remember to feed him on time when she wasn't around anymore. Because just like his other mother, he could eat like a monster, and _yet_ he never hit the obese mark whenever they brought him to the veterinarian. It was probably because of his nightly runs with Kara when she came home from patrol.

She snapped out of her wandering thoughts when hair nudged against her calf and she realized that Barney was gently nudging her in from behind. Once she obliged, he gave her a short look before nudging the door close with his head and then turned back around, sitting back on his haunches and staring at her again.

And then she just sat down on the carpeted floor. Wrapped her arms around the dog. Buried her face in his hair. Wondered how the hell she was going to explain to Kara later.

.

All day, her eyes had managed to stay dry. No shed of tears. Not even moisture.

It wasn't because she didn't want to, but she didn't know how to. Growing up in the Luthor home meant being chastised time and time again for showing weakness. Eventually, one just had to learn to toughen it up and add a few more layers to the already thickening shell to avoid showing signs of weakness, even when in a place where one was supposed to feel safe and sheltered. A place that was supposed to be home.

Supposed she should be grateful to Lillian Luthor for teaching her that long before she decided that prison wasn't the place for her and offed herself. After all, she survived for almost thirty years – in boarding school, in university, in Lex Corp, in L-Corp, in the one and only Luthor mansion – with that teaching, with the tough exterior that no one had managed to break through.

Well, no one but a certain Kara Danvers.

Kara was just, all in all, a surprise. A miracle. From the moment she showed up to Lena's office to the moment she proposed to Lena while they hovering over the Cliff of Moher. Every moment came as unprecedented to Lena, unexpected. She never expected someone have as much faith in her as Kara, much less love her as much as Kara.

No one had ever gotten past her walls until Kara Danvers just decided to build a door for herself. That was why it was when Kara floated over the table and gathered her in her strong and muscular arms that Lena only felt like she could breathe since she spoke to the doctor this morning.

And that single breath felt like a trigger. A lever to lower the dams and let the waterworks do the work. One single breath and she was exhausted from holding it in all day. One single breath and she didn't know how she was supposed to go on.

But then again, not that she had much to go on anymore. There was a deadline.

* * *

 _Second month_

When she opened her eyes, the first person she saw wasn't who she expected. Alex hovered over her, tapping on her tablet with her lower lip trapped under her teeth. Lena released a soundless groan, her throat sore and dry.

She didn't remember much except for the fact that she showed up to the DEO headquarters when she knew she couldn't deny it any longer. When every part of her body hurt. When her hands shook and she could barely type on her laptop. When she could barely see through the struggle of trying to _stand_. When Alex deposited her into a wheelchair and she promptly passed out.

And then she was here.

Alex noticed her wakefulness and abandoned her tablet on the bedside table, pouring a glass of water from a jug and sticking the straw in Lena's face. As Lena sipped, her sister-in-law murmured gentle prompts to be slow and patient.

"She's angry at you," Alex whispered, brushing away some of Lena's hair. "You need to stop being so stubborn."

"I didn't want to –"

"She's your _wife_ , Lena." The raven haired woman deflated into her pillow. She stared at the redhead, noticing the strain on her lips, like she was trying very hard to keep that pained smile on her lips. Lena frowned and looked away, not wanting to look at that face when the woman was surely going to say her next piece. "And I'm your sister-in-law."

She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing more than anything that she could pump more morphine to go back to sleep. "I know."

"You sure don't seem like you do!" Alex finally snapped. When she gathered enough courage to open her eyes and look back, her sister-in-law was positively fuming and devastated. "Why won't you let us help you? Why are you so determined to –" Alex gestured wildly in the air "– stay in pain? Why do you want us to worry about you all the time? Why do you insist on doing this alone when you have family?"

Her next breath came and went sharply as she sieved through the maze that was her brain, the utter mess that had never been uncluttered despite the direction her life had taken since the move to National City. She knew that somewhere out there, in near vicinity, was Kara, unwilling to see her in anger but also unwilling to be far from her, most likely eavesdropping on their conversation.

She'd been holding on for a month. Enduring the pain and the darkness that had returned to encroaching the crevices of her brain since she had received the report. She had thought she could keep this up for longer, maybe until her time came, but obviously, she had overestimated her own pain threshold – mentally or physically.

"I want –" She closed her mouth and clenched her jaw "– wanted you to hate me."

"What?"

"If you –"

It was difficult to talk. Not just because her throat felt like someone had just run sandpaper over it, but also because she hadn't been able to grasp this thought for quite some time. It had been running wild in her head and she was unable to catch it, failing to fully identify it to even give her actions a name.

She was there. She saw. She knew. That her friends had been watching her and struggling with whether they should stop her in her grit to get everything done before she had to eventually relinquish control. That her wife had been trying really, really hard to be a good wife, being there for a spouse with a deadline to her life and not saying a word. That every night, Kara came back from patrol, made her milk, cuddled with her, talked nonsense with her, put her to bed, and cried in the bathroom.

She witnessed the frustration and the irritation crossing their faces whenever she pretended nothing was going on. And she felt a sick sense of achievement whenever she saw those expressions. Even when she hadn't been able to grasp what she wanted from them, it seemed like her subconscious had caught up.

She restarted, slower this time. "If you hate me, it'll be easier. When I leave, it'll be easier."

"You won't –"

Lena shot the redhead a withering look, tired of hearing lies from the lips of everyone, even those closer to her. She knew they were trying to comfort her; she also knew that they were trying to convince themselves, which was why it'd be easier.

Alex stopped what could be a diatribe, but she didn't stop entirely. She just decided to veer off another direction. "Easier for who? You? How is it going to be easier?"

If she wasn't so fucking tired right now, so exhausted right down to the bone that she just wanted the cancer to take her and get it over with, Lena would have scoffed. Rather than that, Lena opted for a resigned sigh. Maybe Alex wouldn't get it, but her wife certainly would – her wife who was most certainly eavesdropping somewhere in the building.

"Easier for you," she finally said, her voice no longer as staunch as before, only defeated. "It will never be easier for me, but it'll be easier for you."

For a moment, the DEO agent hovering over seemed prepared to retort again, yet to have fully absorbed the implication in Lena's words. But as she opened her mouth, it seemed like the goal had dawned on her. The initial ire was soon replaced with –

"Don't pity me," Lena snapped.

Alex clenched her jaw and she shook her head vigorously as she looked away for a few seconds. Lena shifted her gaze to the dull ceiling when she saw the woman blinking away unshed tears.

.

At the end of the night, Lena ordered Alex to go home and leave her alone. She needed the rest anyway. When Alex had left the room, she was expecting that she'd be alone.

All day, her wife had been a no-show, and she wanted to say that she wasn't disappointed, but she was. Still, she understood why Kara had decided to stay away for the day. Lena hadn't been completely honest, after all. And the blonde was justified in her irritation.

But then, when she was ready to fall asleep, the door opened to show Kara standing there, dressed up comfortably in a T-shirt and a pair of pants. They stared at each other for a long while over the distance, Kara at the door and Lena in her bed.

And then like she had just made a very difficult decision, Kara's shoulders rose and fell before she stepped in and closed the door behind her. She made a beeline for the bed and easily scooted Lena over without hurting her. Once she made sure that Lena had drank enough, she climbed into the bed, sneaked an arm under Lena's torso, and curled _around_ Lena, forming a protective human shield around Lena's left side.

Lena turned her head sideways and looked into her wife's eyes. Eyes that were filled with sorrow and regret. Unwillingness and resentment. _Love_.

Kara took a deep breath and mumbled low enough for it to only be between the two of them, even though this room was empty save for them both. "Promise me you'll tell me everything from now on."

She could only nod and lift one hand to gently cup Kara's cheek, probing the moisture to spill over. When it did, she just wiped the drops away with her thumb. "I love you."

"I know." Kara nuzzled closer to press her forehead against the top of Lena's head. "But the way you show it is stupid and you need to stop it."

Lena chuckled and closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax and let herself down, to relish in this warmth that only Kara Danvers was capable of providing as much as she could. God knew how long she could feel this.

Before sleep took her in its grasps, as she was on the vestiges of falling to it completely, she heard Kara whisper, "I love you too, you idiot."

* * *

 _Third month_

"Hey." She struggled to lift her eyelids to see the woman who once arrested her standing at the door. Maggie hesitated before coming in and closing the door behind her. "Alex told me you wanted to see me."

Lena smiled and patted the empty space on the bed lightly. Maggie looked almost afraid, as if she did as Lena had wordlessly asked, the raven haired woman would just vanish. Because even though they once disliked each other, they had become good friends over time. One might even say the best of friends, the women who fell in love with the stormy Danvers siblings.

But Maggie was never one to deny a dying woman's wish, so she obeyed, sitting on the edge of the bed and hurriedly taking Lena's hand in hers. "How are you feeling?"

"Almost dead."

" _Lena_."

Lena chuckled and winced at the invisible jabs digging into every part of her body. She blinked rapidly, like she could blink away the ache. She wasn't exactly lying, honestly. When she woke up this morning, not that she had been sleeping well since she collapsed in her office and knew that she was almost there, the knowledge was already encroaching in the back of her very groggy brain.

Like her body knew, and her brain received the message. Quiet. Peaceful. Exactly how she liked it. And she did something that she didn't know she would do at her deathbed. She smiled.

But the bliss was gone the moment she heard Kara's breath change behind her and felt the arms around her tighten. She may be prepared to go; she'd lived a life that she would be eternally grateful for.

But that didn't mean she was prepared to leave her wife behind. She was so scared to.

There was no doubt that her wife would keep on surviving, but that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted Kara to live. To find brightness in life. To trace back her origins and rediscover the optimism that she knew Kara had lost when she learned about the cancer.

But still, just to indulge the detective, she smiled. Squeezing Maggie's hand, she braced herself for her next action, hating herself for it and knowing Maggie would hate her for it as well. But she couldn't say it to Kara. She knew she wouldn't be able to. Kara wouldn't want to hear it anyway. Not now. And Maggie was the only person she could think of to be tough enough to hold her words until the time came.

"I need you to tell Kara something." Maggie started frowning and Lena tightened her grip on the woman's hand. "Alex won't be able to, I know that. And you're the only other person I can trust enough to do this for me."

"Lena –"

"Please. When the time is right –"

The sheet of moisture in Maggie's eyes began to spill over. She shook her head stubbornly and made to snag her hand away, but Lena's tightened grip stop her. Honestly, it would be easy for the woman to just walk away right now, because the former CEO didn't have much strength in her left. She suspected this would be that today would be the last burst of energy she had.

And yet, Maggie's surrender to that one single squeeze said a hell of a lot about their friendship. And in this moment, Lena had never appreciated this genuine friend more.

She offered a weak smile, looking right into the detective's angry eyes. "I'm never going to be able to tell Kara this; I won't have the time." The ache in her chest grew more and more pronounced at the thought of it. She didn't want to fathom what life would be like for her wife, her _family_ , when she was gone. "So I need you to, and I'm sorry that I'm making you do this, but I don't think she can hear it from anyone else. I need you to tell Kara that it's okay. I'm happy. I've never been so happy." She was. She really was. Kara Danvers' mere appearance had brought unbound joy to her life. Even if they had never ended up getting married, Lena would have been pleased. Glad. She just wanted her wife to know that. "I never thought I could be so happy. I've lived for thirty years, and she made it worthwhile. She made me worthwhile. I need you to tell her that the only regret I have is that I can't be here to spend more happy years with her, but the years we've had, they're enough. They're enough, Maggie. Tell her that I love her, I will always be with her, and that it's okay." At this point, she was crying herself, almost gasping.

Maggie stared at her, wiping away tears that wouldn't stop flowing. Finally, she nodded meekly and bowed down so that her head was buried in the crook of Lena's head and shoulder, muffled whimpers echoing in the room.

Lifting one hand to run her fingers through the woman's hair, Lena leaned against the weight by her side. "You're a good friend. I'm so lucky to have found you." She closed her eyes and sighed. "Thank you."

.

It was funny. She didn't think she had ever _not_ felt exhaustion. Exhaustion at her birth mother's valiant attempts to ensure her happiness as a child. Exhaustion at Lionel Luthor's determination to help her adapt to the cold mansion. Exhaustion at her brother's growing paranoia. Exhaustion at Lillian Luthor's pure hatred for her. Exhaustion at the world.

And yet, at this moment, as she floated above National City in the arms of the love of her life, for the first time in her life, she felt enlightened. Like she was ready. All the weight in the world that had been slowly stacked on her shoulders as she grew up was gone.

Huh. So this was what it felt like.

She was ready to leave, but she also didn't want to leave. How could she ever leave behind the one thing that had given her life more meaning than she deserved? Nevertheless, she could already feel it – the weakened grip of life on her heart, knowing that it couldn't have her anymore. Almost there.

"I love you." If she was going to die, she was going to die with her wife knowing this.

And then she heard her mother's voice. Her real mother. Coaxing her. Comforting her.

She smiled and held onto her wife's hand.

" _It's okay, sweet girl. I'm here_ ," her mother said, and it was her mother, because no one called her that but the woman who had made sure she was _good_ so many years ago.

With the general sounds that made National City, with the knowledge that at least Kara wouldn't be alone, she allowed herself to go.

And she turned to look at her wife's profile.

And she closed her eyes with that as her last sight.

And she inhaled.

And she exhaled.

And…

* * *

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